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In the latest issue of Gardeners' World magazine, I go head-to-head with James Alexander-Sinclair by suggesting that gardeners are doing more harm than good by too much autumn tidying. I just know that all this anti-gardening talk is going to get me

.It's so easy to disturb hibernating insects during winter tidying. The thing to remember is not to rouse them before their time, or they'll surely perish. If they cannot be replaced back in the same place, move them to a similar sheltered, but cool spot

at first look unappealing and unattractive, they are nevertheless home to 12–14 per cent of all our red data book and nationally scarce insect species; that’s more than you find in ancient woodlands or on chalk downs.The reason they are so important

see several places where I imagined gangly arms had been thrust through to pilfer our fruit. Humph. Oh well. I re-pegged the nets, did a bit of disgruntled tidying and left.The next week we were back. A glorious day, birds singing, clouds puffing

, but the land tips steeply down to the sea presenting the perfect soil-warming angle to the sun.I think we are the first residents of the bungalow this year and the garden has been recently 'tidied' i.e. savagely cut, mown, and cleared. The pampas grass tussock

to chalk up 15 of my 124 target actions. These are mostly by the simple expedient of not cutting the grass, not winter deadheading, clearing out the pond when I repaired it and by having more than my fair share of thickets.The thickets are obviously paying

of electric blue, lime green and scarlet it's more likely to give the poor beast migraines.Anyway, there was this toad. We don't see them often, but they are definitely about and they usually turn up, like this one, when I'm doing a bit of autumn tidying